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Lot Essay
Tom Wesselmann, one of the central figures of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, produced two series which established his reputation. One was the Great American Nude series, wherein Wesselmann joyfully reimagined the classical odalisque in the mode of mid-20th century American consumer culture. The other was his numbered still life series, of which the present work is exemplary example, a genre form that figured among his earliest forays as an artist, and one that he would continue to explore for much of his career.
In Still Life No. 47 a Coca-Cola bottle is paired with a rather sensuously-shaped orange, both perched on a wooden shelf that projects out from the painted surface. The Coca-Cola bottle, a found metal advertising object, and the orange, rendered in wood, are both three-dimensional forms, Other Wesselmann Still Lifes from this period included such popular brands as Wishbone bottled salad dressing, Tareyton cigarettes, Royal Crown Cola, Del Monte canned vegetables, and other comparable supermarket items. Wesselmann enjoyed appropriating elements from the everyday, and he seemed to be both offering wry commentary on the trappings of the commercial landscape, and forthrightly celebrating its bounty, as well. He enjoyed depicting the things that were desired by Americans of the Kennedy-era, objects that conveyed an easy confidence in the rightness of American life and the American economic system. In the present work, he strived to create compositions that achieved a fine balance of elements, and that projected harmonious color combinations.
One of the signature aspects of Wesselmann’s Still Lifes was their collage aesthetic, which merged acrylic or oilpainted canvas or board surfaces with paper or other two-dimensional elements, together with three-dimensional “real life” aspects. His use of fat surfaces in combination with three-dimensional ones toys with our sense of what is real and what is illusory. With the still life, Tom Wesselmann was working within a genre almost as old as art itself, but with a crucial twist: through his depiction of “pop” objects he made still life hip and contemporary. His Still Lifes joined in the same assemblage aesthetic that Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns explored. Wesselmann’s work was included in the influential 1962 New Realists show at the Sidney Janis Gallery, one of the first gallery exhibitions of Pop Art and one that included some of the figures who, as did Wesselmann, brought a Pop sensibility to the still life genre—Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg. Commenting years later, in the mid-1980s, about the still life, Wesselmann remarked, “I’m just as excited when I make a still life as I am about the nude, just as excited about one element that I’ve chosen to work with…. (it is) no less important to me, and equally engaging to me” (Oral history interview with Tom Wesselmann, 1984 January 3-February 8, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).
Still Life No. 47 was acquired in 1965 by Harriet and Lewis Winter, directly from the influential Green Gallery in New York. Harriet Winter was a remarkably creative designer who specialized in creating dresses and garments inspired by vintage clothing and the many celebrities who visited her from the nearby Chelsea Hotel—creating forms of “wearable” art. Her husband, Lewis, was also a creative person known for his critical eye and passion for art, design and craftsmanship. He often frequented Green Gallery and was influenced by Henry Geldzahler.
The Still Lifes, although outwardly sunny and optimistic, suggest darker undertones, with ideas of unease over material excess, of social conformity, of the power of the commercial over all. Wesselmann always denied there was a social critique in the work, however. He wanted to portray everyday items for their visual appeal, rather than to offer a cultural critique. “Along with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Jim Dine, Mr. Wesselmann belonged to a generation of artists who gave American art and culture a new sense of itself. They found inspiration, source materials and even working methods…in advertising, movies, food labels, household appliances, newspaper front pages and in commercial art techniques like silkscreen, Benday dots and billboard painting. The changes they wrought continue to reverberate through contemporary art and life” (R. Smith, “Tom Wesselmann, 73, Pop Artist Known for Sleek Nudes, Is Dead” New York Times, December 20, 2004).
In Still Life No. 47 a Coca-Cola bottle is paired with a rather sensuously-shaped orange, both perched on a wooden shelf that projects out from the painted surface. The Coca-Cola bottle, a found metal advertising object, and the orange, rendered in wood, are both three-dimensional forms, Other Wesselmann Still Lifes from this period included such popular brands as Wishbone bottled salad dressing, Tareyton cigarettes, Royal Crown Cola, Del Monte canned vegetables, and other comparable supermarket items. Wesselmann enjoyed appropriating elements from the everyday, and he seemed to be both offering wry commentary on the trappings of the commercial landscape, and forthrightly celebrating its bounty, as well. He enjoyed depicting the things that were desired by Americans of the Kennedy-era, objects that conveyed an easy confidence in the rightness of American life and the American economic system. In the present work, he strived to create compositions that achieved a fine balance of elements, and that projected harmonious color combinations.
One of the signature aspects of Wesselmann’s Still Lifes was their collage aesthetic, which merged acrylic or oilpainted canvas or board surfaces with paper or other two-dimensional elements, together with three-dimensional “real life” aspects. His use of fat surfaces in combination with three-dimensional ones toys with our sense of what is real and what is illusory. With the still life, Tom Wesselmann was working within a genre almost as old as art itself, but with a crucial twist: through his depiction of “pop” objects he made still life hip and contemporary. His Still Lifes joined in the same assemblage aesthetic that Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns explored. Wesselmann’s work was included in the influential 1962 New Realists show at the Sidney Janis Gallery, one of the first gallery exhibitions of Pop Art and one that included some of the figures who, as did Wesselmann, brought a Pop sensibility to the still life genre—Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg. Commenting years later, in the mid-1980s, about the still life, Wesselmann remarked, “I’m just as excited when I make a still life as I am about the nude, just as excited about one element that I’ve chosen to work with…. (it is) no less important to me, and equally engaging to me” (Oral history interview with Tom Wesselmann, 1984 January 3-February 8, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).
Still Life No. 47 was acquired in 1965 by Harriet and Lewis Winter, directly from the influential Green Gallery in New York. Harriet Winter was a remarkably creative designer who specialized in creating dresses and garments inspired by vintage clothing and the many celebrities who visited her from the nearby Chelsea Hotel—creating forms of “wearable” art. Her husband, Lewis, was also a creative person known for his critical eye and passion for art, design and craftsmanship. He often frequented Green Gallery and was influenced by Henry Geldzahler.
The Still Lifes, although outwardly sunny and optimistic, suggest darker undertones, with ideas of unease over material excess, of social conformity, of the power of the commercial over all. Wesselmann always denied there was a social critique in the work, however. He wanted to portray everyday items for their visual appeal, rather than to offer a cultural critique. “Along with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Jim Dine, Mr. Wesselmann belonged to a generation of artists who gave American art and culture a new sense of itself. They found inspiration, source materials and even working methods…in advertising, movies, food labels, household appliances, newspaper front pages and in commercial art techniques like silkscreen, Benday dots and billboard painting. The changes they wrought continue to reverberate through contemporary art and life” (R. Smith, “Tom Wesselmann, 73, Pop Artist Known for Sleek Nudes, Is Dead” New York Times, December 20, 2004).